Drop Kick that Bird...one more time

One thing I realized as an adult is that every family lives at one level or another of dysfunction. Our level was the Grand Dysfunctional level ...and therefore the stuff of legend...I always thought we should be issued a plaque or something.

As a teenager in the 70's, I was part of the Baby boomer youth generation and it's big rebellion with our parents, the Greatest Generation. They were in a complete quandry as to just what the hell the kids were rebelling against . The clash mostly came to a head on holidays...our house was no exception...

One Thanksgiving in particular, is the stuff of legends...and so it goes.

My mother was a partial cook,mainly weekends and holidays...and it would take at least three Brandy Alexanders for her to get through the night...Thanksgiving was a challenge for her this year, because her husband Bill , our stepfather, had invited his cranky 90 year old last-survivor-of-the-Johnstown-flood-when-will- this-woman-ever-die-mother over for Thanksgiving....her name was Daisy (good God I named my dog that, is that some weird Jungian thing?) and Daisy didn't like my mom or the fact that her son had packed her off to the the Lutheran Home to spend her final days among the quilt makers.

Daisy was parked strategically in the sunporch and and barking unrecognizable orders into the air as Bill crept into the vodka...my mom in the kitchen, was announcing to no one in general that the cooking would begin and was intermittently rousting my sister and me out of bed with the mantra.."This is not the Hilton, you girls better get up and help with dinner".

I dragged my teenager self down to the kitchen to find my mother deep into Brandy ALexander Uno and her arm up to her elbow into the cavity of the turkey...I presume it had to do with the filling... God I hope so...I must of had a strange look on my face..so mother in her most grand and almost slurred way said "You know I could've been a surgeon."...well there's your explanation, pardner.

The turkey stuffed and silenced was carried and placed in the double oven on the wall.

I could hear Daisy's raspy voice yelling something from the sunporch which sent my stepfather, Bill straight out of the room and back to the liquour cabinet....
as teenager's we can never know the stress adults are under, until we become adults..all we know is that something is brewing and we want to be around to catch any loose change that falls on the ground when it's all over.

Hours later, my sister sauntered on down and another discussion about the Hilton began..apparently we are not princesses and my mother is not our maid and yada yada yada...oops I think I just rolled my eyes ...the requisite snotty teenage girl reaction to a lecture...oh and another thing if you think I was put on this earth just to clean up after you two, you are GREATLY mistaken...

Daisy barks again from the sunporch, you know the woman could've caught fire and no one would ever bother to go check...Bill heads to the vodka...my mom is now melting down over the fact that nobody helped peel the potatoes and this is ..say together... NOT THE HILTON (of course I'm wondering if we ever did stay in a Hilton and I could use a frame of reference here). The eye rolling begins and oh we are caught mid roll as my mom downs another Brandy Alexander...and the pitch is going up and up and....who is going to help me make this meal..how late did you girls stay out last night..this doesn't all happen by magic you know..I am not the maid....no one helps me around here...

and out of the corner of my eye....

I see Bill...

did he just open the oven door?

wait a minute...does he have the turkey...

where is he going....

I yelled something like "hey"...

my mother and my sister and I stop dead mid-yell....

we can hear the front door open...

we all start making our way through the hall to the door...

just in time to hear Bill saying " You want help with the turkey, here's your damn turkey"...

and then a large muffled thud.

He had dropped kicked the turkey into the yard...

the three of us stood stunned in the door way...

Bill walked right past us back into the house,wiping his hands....

a suburban Pontius Pilate.

My mother didn't skip a beat, she looked at the brutalized Butter Ball in the yard and said. "I am NOT cleaning that up."

Of course not...this is ..not the Hilton...and you aren't ...the maid.

..........
Years later we wrote a song called "Drop Kick that Bird" It was played in rotation on WXXX...my mom called everyone she knew to tell them to request it.

It became our Thanksgiving story...no pilgrims, no Indians no maize...no, just remember when Bill drop kicked that bird....

The neighborhood dogs were thankful for the free meal in the grass and I was amazed at the quickness of their removal of a carcass.

Bill was thankful it shut Daisy up for awhile.

My mother was thankful she actually didn't have to cook the rest of the meal.

My sister was thankful for the distraction from her breaking curfew.

My uncle Denny was thankful that we stopped by , although unannounced ,and ate turkey at his house.

And ...I was thankful that the word Hilton wasn't used the rest of the night.



Happy Thanksgiving, from one Grand Dysfunctional family to another...all we can do is live in victory and don't stress over getting it all right...leave the perfection to God.

....

The Chances we Get

I am writing this through tear clouded eyes. I admit it, I am a weeper, even commercials get to me, but today, today was one of those days only a morphan (middle aged orphan) can understand. An event at the grocery store triggered such a moment of mourning for my mom and a grateful feeling for the chances we get.

I am also wondering why in heaven's name do I always have these moments at the grocery store?

Really.

Today I was doing a little weekly shopping and preliminary stock up for Thanksgiving, it was crowded, lots of senior citizens...social security check day no doubt. The aisles were crowded and moving slow and cranky babies were cranking in the usual cranky way. These are the days that I put my stereo headphones on, pump up the iTunes and proceed to hunter/gather in my own little world of lush harmonies and guitars and oh my, are those free cheese samples?

I found my things without event , even had the guy at the seafood counter do me a solid on some scallops for dinner, yeah scallops, I now like them...and I slid up into line and removed my headphones to join the real world ...I was reading the tabloid headlines about Will and Kate when I heard someone yell "Help her , help her , she's falling".

I look back down onto the aisle to see and elderly woman whose legs had failed her and given out , she was hanging onto her cart for dear life, terrified that she might fall to the floor and hurt her head...I was four deep in line at the register and was quickly trying to figure how to snake out and grab her, when a another woman came up from behind her and held her, voices were yelling "Get her a chair, someone help!"

This woman was so small and frail , her hair a mass of white, she was barely taller than the shopping cart, which was filled so high it must have been a monumental labor to push.

The look on her face was one of complete fright. She was so scared and alone.

Within seconds there was a wheel chair, she was whisked into it and someone was calling 911.

I became a bowl of jello.

Tears were streaming down my face all the way to the car.

It took me back to a year before my mother came to live in Pittsburgh in assisted living and how she told me she had experienced low blood sugar and her knees gave out on her in the grocery store. She recounted how the clerks helped her and sat her on the bench and gave her some orange juice to drink...it was so disturbing to hear this. They asked her if there was anyone she could call to pick her up, she couldn't come up with a name, her husband was dead, and her daughters lived too far away....okay you can kill me right now.

These kind strangers where doing my job.

That moment marked the beginning of the move here. She needed help to shop, to bath, to even walk. It was time to say goodbye to the behemoth of the house and head to the burgh.

For 4 years I shopped every week for her...she hated the food where she was staying, and it becomes an obsession, not much else to focus on ya know...so in the midst of a full time job and taking care of a family, I became Delivery Girl...there should have been a hat involved, I'm sure of that.

Mom would call me several times a week to add things to the list, Equal was on it several times. Packets of Equal are like crack in nursing homes, they hoard it and use it to curry favors.

I pushed carts full of strange items only seniors need and I made sure I proclaimed at check out , those diapers aren't for me ...sometimes I cranked about it, sometimes she cranked about it , but it was a connection for us as I delivered and stocked the groceries in her fridge...and I would cook her favorite foods and bring those over too.

She was diabetic and wanted all the wrong foods, but here's a tip for those out there caring for an elderly parent at the end of their years...lighten up...let them have the damn cookies...you're not going to reverse the diabetes and what are we talking here, a few years left? Better yet, sit and eat the cookies with them.

I'm glad I had the chance to shop and care for my mom, and yes, caring for her turned some things upside down for awhile...but hey, I imagine I rocked her boat pretty much straight through the 70's and well, you know the saying about paybacks ...the routine became so ingrained that after my mom passed, I couldn't bring myself to go into a grocery store for quite awhile, because I was falling into tears at the check out each time.

But if I hadn't taken the chance to take care of her, what would I be thinking about when I saw that woman today?

Even though the sight of her little hands hanging on so tight to the cart reduced me to my usual quivering crying self , a voice inside me kept reminding me that for the last four years of my mom's life, she never had to rely on the kindness of strangers in a grocery store ever again because someone was there for her, taking the chance.

...

An open letter to Jeff Bezos of Amazon

Dear Mr.Bezos,

I'm sure the heading of this email is all you need to know of the correspondence ahead.

Of course I am shocked at your inclusion of a how to manual for pedophiles,The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure, and in turn, disturbed that you stand behind Freedom of Speech to sell it, but what really shocks me is your need to do so.

Because of your inability to understand the larger ramifications of your commercial rationalization of this indefensible subject, I can only conclude that somewhere down the road, you lost not only your spine but your soul.

You had the luxury of the decision as to whether or not selling this book was something you really needed to do.

Apparently it is.

Therefore our family will make a similar decision that we no longer need to order from Amazon, that would be covered under my Freedom from Creeps.

In truth,

Invisi-gal